Android in Feb 2013: Jelly Bean grows, Gingerbread dominates Comments

by the way, there are no low cost phones running Jellybean. I just bought a $200 LG Optimus L9 with ICS. So, it's the carriers that truly decide your pointless piechart showing slow acceptance of Jellybean. Why bother depressing everyone that will never get an upgrade, as the major carriers move own without us selling the $500+ phones with everything.

Your pie chart is pointless. It is not the consumer that picks Jellybean, ICS or Gingerbread. it is the slow idiotic risk averse carriers that decide when we get our upgrades if at all. Since they have no incentive to upgrade to jellybean, they drag their feet and promise us pie in the sky JB, while Apple allows updates on all their devices. Why is it so hard for these carriers to give us an OS upgrade, when JB has been out since last year 2012?

Anonymous, 07 Mar 2013Android doesn't run on native code like WP8 and iOS. It runs on Davik VM. It won't be as smoot... moreAndroid apps can run native code, but the problem is that is more easy to program in JAVA language.

The same for Windows Phone, mayor apps are in Silverlight and not in C++, but Silverlight isn't slow as JAVA.

Anonymous, 07 Mar 2013Ics is nasty,,wish I never updated, so laggy and buggy, its hard to see why I bother with htc.... moreAndroid doesn't run on native code like WP8 and iOS. It runs on Davik VM. It won't be as smooth as those other two OS.

If it weren't for those quirky adjustments OEMs made to the UI, ie launchers and digging deep into the framework of the Android OS, more phones would get the updates quicker.

This causes delays with the updates because that means the OEMs need to sit down and completely butcher the framework and UI again. They also need to make the bloatware compatible with ICS/JB.

On low-end phones, like my Sidekick 4G, they may decide that it is not worth the time or effort to invest on a mid-range device. Especially when they further twisted the UI with an altered version of TouchWiz as in the Sidekick's case.

I dev over at xda informed that this is common practice for companies like Samsung. It is done to force people to upgrade to newer devices. While understandable, I do not have the money to upgrade to a Galaxy III or Nexus 4 using that crappy partial discount T-Mobile offers.

To a certain degree Google only have themselves to blame for this mess. If instead of putting out a single new O/S to one phone and leaving everyone else, even the same manufacturer in some instances, to play catch up they actually worked with manufacturers across the board, they could roll out updates across the board to mutliple devices and manufacturers at a time. Not that I am in anyway saying Microsoft are the greatest etc, I use a Samsung Galaxy Note 2, but at least they do this and get updates out acorss he board very quickly. How many MS phone are running an O/S that has had no upgrades in over 2 years?

That's why nexus still the best.don't get wrong I do prefer xperia z, htc one, xperia zl and upcoming galaxy s4 over the nexus anyway, but end of the day nexus is pure google phone that getting update in time even though nexus 4 didn't comes with best screen or best camera.

GB will still be in the lead one year from now, it will not go down so easily. There are so many people on GB who are stuck without any updated from the OEMs. And I doubt the OEMs will get the updates going, so GB all the way for one more year.

Anonymous, 06 Mar 2013To be fair, Gingerbread is a very useful OS, and had some of the least lag. It's still relevan... moreToo true. I recently installed the dGB ROM on my ageing Desire and it really does work very quickly. If you want a simple Android phone that does what you want it to do, then GB has those options whilst still being powerful enough to have some extra luxories. It is far simpler that the much more advanced ICS/JB release.